Blogging - Quantity versus Quality

Although I blog at least once a week on average, I've always been the sort of blogger who spends a lot of time thinking about my blog posts. In effect, I've treated them like small magazine articles in which I write up the blog post, reread it, tech edit it, noodle on it some more, and finally post it. But that takes a long time. And, after much thought, I'm not sure that it dramatically improves either the efficacy of the information or is the best use of my time.

So, I've been thinking about shifting gears on blogging into the "near Twitter" realm of blogging rapidly and without too much emphasis on clean grammar, well-structure paragraphs, and the like.

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I stayed away from the rapid fire blogging. I've made a point of sticking to more article like posts. When doing the rapid fire posting I think you can end up with a lot of information, but not enough knowledge being passed along.

While this can work for some, I've found that I'm not a fan of the blogs which are setup like this. There ends up being just two many posts to filter through, and the better content ends up getting lost in the flood.

Whichever way, I think what matters is whether you've said something useful to some readers. My own measure is, "does it add anything to the community?" If I don't have anything at least I think is value-added to say, I shut up. But that's just me.

I align with Linchi, but will extend and say there can be a balance of both. You don't want to flood a la twitter, and you also don't want to wait 6 months between posts because you don't always have a sufficient chunk of time to write a long or complex entry. For example, if there is an important patch or new CU for SQL Server, I post about it (unless someone else already has)... not to see myself type, but to inform. Other times I will post more in-depth or controversial posts either in an article style for reference, or in a question style to invoke conversation (or maybe to inspire someone else to write an article style).

You can post quickly about a piece of information (such as a service pack, or some community news) or offer a link to an article / book you've read and start a dialogue about it. However I think that most of the time content quality should prevail.

My humble opinion would be quality but short posts. Really I have a lot of blogs I read, so does everyone all via RSS, when I see some huge lengthy blog post and it is very high quality well I archive it and say man I want to read that. In reality, I have stuff from back in 2003 still archived I revisit once in a while and some I say man I want to read that still and hang on to it and some I say oh that tech has been replaced and I delete it. So my suggestion would be high quality for sure, but if it is going to be lengthy maybe break it into smaller parts giving you more posts.

I think there is a balance. I don't think a blog post needs to be as "perfect" as a magazine article, but it should be informative. I also think that if it is about something the author finds interesting then it is blog-worthy.

Just as there is a fog of war there is a fog of blog. It's one big blizzard of blur. There's such a glut of them you can easily get a case of blog bloat or worse blog cog from too many feeds. There's a ton of Mini-Me blogs, see me, hear me, read me, feel me, feed me where each Mini offers himself/herself up like the soup du jour. Is such promotion pro bono or pro self?:) Well I suppose a bit of both. There's really nothing wrong with it but still..:) As for content there's lots. Since many never met a feature they didn't like there's lots of repetition. But you can't expect evangelists not to whip up on the latest and greatest. Are there some that are just full of shill regardless of the subject? Sure, just as there are plenty of bashers. You can't filter out all the anarchy. But what of really good content? A lot of really good stuff is just mature criticism and stingingly controversial. This stuff is interesting but runs the risk of offending many who bought in and think they have a responsibility to defend their patron saint no matter what. So we don't see as much of this content as we should. Perhaps there should be a blog hall of fame (and shame) so we could all see what a great content blog is. But who are the ones who will judge?:)

This is GREAT feedback, everyone. It seems like the consensus is that the frequency of posting is less important than the quality. The posts can be short and come out rapidly, but they have to be worth the time. Me-too posts aren't worth the time. Thanks!

As an example, if I'm trying out a new product and I want to post a review of it to my blog. I can blog as I discover features that I really like or don't like and create a series of short posts. Or I can wait and blog a much lengthier post once I've formed an overall opinion - more like an article.

So far I've taken the lengthier, article-like approach, but I'm wondering if that's truly the best.